Cowside House With Attached Outbuilding

This is a late 17th-century house with an attached outbuilding, dated 1707, and altered in the early 19th century. It’s constructed of limestone rubble with a graduated stone slate roof. The house is two storeys high and comprises two bays, with a recessed two-bay range of two builds attached to the left. The house has quoins and a plinth. The central doorway has a three-pane overlight, and the windows throughout are recessed and have chamfered mullions of 6 and 5 lights to the ground floor, and 4 lights above. The ground-floor left window and the first-floor windows have king mullions. A reset datestone with raised lettering “1707” sits above the door. A continuous drip mould runs above the ground-floor windows, interrupted by the rebuilt doorway. Corniced end stacks are present, with the right-hand stack projecting slightly. The range to the left has a wide chamfered arched doorway with a keystone to the right, and a blocked recessed chamfered window above. A byre door is located to the left, with quoined jambs and a shallow lintel; between the doors, an irregular line of quoins distinguishes the two stages of building. The rear of the house features two narrow gabled wings with a full-height outshut containing the staircase. Recessed chamfered windows are present throughout, with two lights to the ground floor left and right, one light almost at ground level in the centre, and one to the first floor right. A narrow stair window with a roughly cut transom is located to the first floor, centre. The outbuilding has two small square byre windows. The right return has a blocked segmental-arched window to the first floor left, and a narrow chamfered window to the first floor of the rear wing. Internally, the original plan featured direct entry, but an inserted partition wall to the left now creates a narrow entrance and kitchen/living room. This room contains a fine segmental-arched fireplace with moulded imposts on the jambs and deeply chamfered voussoirs. Two ceiling beams are built into the fireplace wall and have stop-chamfered stops with run-out stops. Finely moulded joists are set onto wall-beams carried on moulded corbels. The original fireplace has an inserted early 19th-century stone fireplace, which contains the remains of a cast iron range. The parlour to the right of the entrance passage has a smaller original fireplace with a cambered arch, matching the beams in the kitchen. The wooden staircase has collapsed. It originally flanked a series of small rear rooms, likely a dairy to the left. The house is a fine example of an early 18th-century vernacular building. The plan, masonry, and carpentry of the fireplaces and ceilings remained largely unaltered until the early 19th century when the doorway was enlarged, the lintel raised, the entrance passage inserted, the fireplace added, and a cooking range installed.